


Nights We Weren't

by gaywrongs



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, F/F, does this count as a drabble, joyri but seulgi is there, pretty vague pretty sad pretty self-insert, why do i have another long fic outlined that also involves drunk joy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 14:32:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17644592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaywrongs/pseuds/gaywrongs
Summary: Joy gets drunk. Yeri isn't there. Seulgi is.Or,Love is confusing, relationships doubly so, and Joy is tired.





	Nights We Weren't

**Author's Note:**

> angst?? angst.

It was only eleven at night, and Joy was drunk.

It wasn’t like she had meant to be. The party had been advertised as more of a casual kickback, a couple of her friend-acquaintances had said they were going, and she really had meant to take a shot or two, nothing more, and return home for a good night's rest.

But there had been jello shots, and a full bottle of Crown Royal, and really good music, and someone had asked about her girlfriend.

And so the bottle of Crown Royal found itself empty, and Joy found herself staggering away from the party, an arm wrapped around her waist. She wasn’t sure if it was for support, or if the person it was attached to was trying to cop a feel. She wasn’t sure which option disgusted her more.

“I’m drunk,” she stated. She congratulated herself for conveying this important message to the world. The hand on her waist patted it gently.

“I know.” Was that voice familiar? Joy couldn’t tell. It was a girl. There was less of a chance to be taken advantage of, then. She tripped over the sidewalk.

“I… am super,” she giggled, “super, duper… drunk.”

“We’re almost there.”

“Are you going to take advantage of me?” Joy whined. She knew she was staggering, but she couldn’t help it. The sidewalk kept coming up to meet her heels too soon. She hoped the girl didn’t mind how much she leaned into her.

“No, but I’m getting you inside before someone does.” The voice hardens, and then suddenly grows too soft. “You’re far too beautiful to be drunk and alone.” The grip on her waist disappeared, and Joy tried her best to make sense of her spinning surroundings. A door, maybe. Her heels looked awful. Why had she gone out in those?

The girl’s words caught up to her then, and she tried to sound indignant. “Hey,” she swatted the air in front of her, “I’m not alone. I have a girl… I have…”

But did she really?

She caught a whiff of herself, an ugly conglomeration of rarely-used perfume and spilled alcohol, and suddenly she didn’t feel so good.

The hand was back. “Just sit down. I’ll get you some water.” Joy’s knees hit the edge of something. She took it as a sign to obey, and collapsed sideways onto whatever she had run into. A sofa? It smelled like mothballs, and alcohol, and oh god she was going to be sick --

“Here. There’s a trashcan right in front of you. You need to sit up.”

Joy squeezed her eyes shut tight at the waves of nausea that rolled over her. The girl was saying words, but none of them made any sense. Also, the girl herself did not make sense. Somehow. Joy was certain of that. Like Yerim. Yerim was certain. Yerim did not make sense.

“Hey. You need to sit up. Drink this water.”

Joy tried to move in a vaguely upwards way, but everything spun on its head and she had a girlfriend, she had a girlfriend, she had Yerim --

She woke up and instantly knew she was still drunk. Not nearly as drunk as when she had left the party; at least she could remember that. She remembered leaving, and the girl, and arriving somewhere, and a couch, and Yerim.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness around her. She was still on that sofa, and it still smelled like mothballs. The room did a one-eighty for a brief moment, and then all was right. The room was small. A couple of small sofas, a television stand with no television atop it, a sliver of a platform that she guessed would be considered a coffee table, and a person asleep on the floor near her feet.

A girl. The girl. The one who hadn’t taken advantage of her. Or had she? Joy looked down at her body and realized that she was still in her party clothes, sans the heels, but draped in a thick blanket.

The girl let out a soft rumble. Joy stared at her. Sideways like this, she looked pretty cute. She was in sweats and a large T-shirt, no blanket. Disheveled bangs covered parts of her face that weren’t buried in her arms. Had she been at the party? Joy thought about trying to remember, but lazily gave up on that idea. The girl shifted as if she could feel eyes on her. Her eyebrows furrowed. Definitely cute. Her cheek drifted off of her arm and pressed into the sofa. The new texture must have woken her up.

Joy stared into slow blinking, cat-like eyes.

They squinted for a moment. The girl’s head lifted off of the sofa and tilted to the side, pondering. She appeared to remember something and righted her posture. She looked away from Joy. Joy continued to stare unabashedly.

“You’re awake? Have some water.” She reached towards the coffee table and pushed the bottled water that rested on top of it, still full, towards Joy.

She didn’t make sense.

“I have a girlfriend,” said Joy, because that was the only thing she could think to say that made sense in a situation that this should have been but wasn’t.

“I know.” The cat eyes flitted to hers. Joy felt small under the covers, suddenly. “You talked about her a lot.”

“I did?” Joy couldn’t remember. The girl’s lips quirked into a small smile. Joy stared.

“You also talked at her a lot.”

“Huh?” That wasn’t possible. Yerim was far, far away from Joy and her little world. She couldn’t talk to her.

“You called her. Left a lot of messages.”

Joy’s blood ran cold. She sat up and grabbed the water, the seal already broken. The blanket slipped off of her shoulders and left her skin cold too.

“You love her a lot.” It was a statement, like “I’m drunk”, or “I have a girlfriend”, or “I’m in love with you but I’ve never known anything else and I want you to do what’s best for you”.

“You didn’t take advantage of me,” Joy countered weakly. She remembered the bottle in her hand and started to chug it down so she wouldn’t have to look at the girl’s eyes.

“Why would I?” The girl’s gaze burned into her with their neutrality. She pulled the bottle away from her lips, watching as the girl’s eyes followed.

“You said I was beautiful,” Joy recalled.

The girl nodded, once. “You said you weren’t alone.”

And suddenly Joy felt like crying. All night she hadn’t felt that urge. She had let the pounding bass and the ocean of bodies around her pull her through their excitement and sense of freedom. That’s what parties were for, right? To feel free? After enough, she had felt it. A moment suspended in blurred time. A moment without regret.

But now, even while still drunk, Joy had lost it, and it had been replaced with that pull in her gut that never truly left her. The one that whispered simple statements and roundabout phone conversations round and round her memory.

“You can cry if you need to,” The girl said.

“You can kiss me if you need to,” Joy said. The eyes didn’t even flinch. Joy felt like she deserved it, all of it. She messily capped the water bottle and tossed it to the table, where it hit and rolled off onto the floor. She felt like hiding under the blanket. She let her upper body fall back onto the couch, hardly feeling it when her head smacked into the armrest.

“You have a girlfriend.” The girl’s voice was gentle. She scooted on the floor over to where Joy’s head awkwardly lay. Her touch was gentle. She adjusted Joy’s head so it would rest more comfortably.

“Do I?” Joy was weary. The urge to cry passed. She just wanted the tiredness in her bones to leave.

“You aren’t alone.” Her lips were even gentler. She pulled the covers up to Joy’s neck and kissed her forehead. “Now go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Joy could only watch, limbs too heavy to move, as the girl combed Joy’s hair out of her face, placed the water bottle back onto the table, and exited the room.

The silence pressed her into the sofa. The blanket smelled nice. Joy snuggled into it, trying not to catch whiffs of her alcohol-soaked clothes underneath.

The girl had left her out here. The night wasn’t over.

A sudden glow across the room caught her slow eyes. From here she could tell it was her phone, plugged into an outlet in the wall by the television stand. The fully charged symbol gave way to the wallpaper picture of her and Yerim from all those years ago, before there had been love, before there had been growing up.

No new notifications.

Joy closed her eyes. She wasn’t alone.

She wasn’t.

She fell asleep to soft snores a room over and the image of her younger self behind her eyes.


End file.
